I Don't Want To Be Marilyn Manson

I want to address the elephant in my room professionally speaking. I'm talking about the comparisons I get to Marilyn Manson. First of all, I want to say that I like Marilyn Manson. He's a solid artist with incredibly catchy songs that appeal to me sonically and conceptually. That being said, I wouldn't cite him as one of my influences. I've only ever owned one Marilyn Manson album and that's Mechanical Animals.

Anyone who knows me personally, knows that my biggest influence is Trent Reznor. I love that guy! His music has touched my life on the deepest most personal levels and his example as someone who has suffered through depression and addiction and made it through has inspired me personally to do the same. I quit drinking and started writing music because of Trent Reznor's example of an artist who can still make amazing art without allowing their demons to rule their life. He is hands down the biggest inspiration to me as an artist and a human being.

Let's get back to Manson though as this blog post is about how I get annoyed(but also kinda flattered) with the incredibly frequent comparison. I want to make one thing abundantly clear and that is in no way have I ever tried to emulate, copy or rip him off. It came to me as a pretty big surprise when I started getting the comparison, over and over and over again. I never saw myself like that and no artist likes to be accused of ripping someone else off. We fancy ourselves as unique, and that uniqueness is very important to us so at first I found it really offensive, but given how prolific of an artist he is, in a weird way it's also flattering.

The comparison can work both for and against me though. On one hand it's kinda good from a marketing standpoint because if I pitch myself as a "female Marilyn Manson" it automatically gives people a reference point. I hate doing it, but as a musician people ask all the time, "who are you comparable to?" I cringe every time I say it, but due to the fact that so many people have given me the Manson comparison, I often end up saying "I'm kinda like a female Marilyn Manson." I hate making a statement like this because while it gives a point of reference it puts me in a box artistically. I don't want to be measured up against another artist.

The comparison started after I released my music video for Lapdance Romance. Looking at the video now, I can see how people see similarities, but it really was not my intent. When I first asked my friend Arcelia Ocana to direct the video she asked me for some references. The two music videos I gave her for inspiration were "Mr. Brightside" by The Killers and "The Perfect Drug" by Nine Inch Nails. 

LAPDANCE ROMANCE

I really loved the burlesque club idea from Mr. Brightside and it was a concept relavent to the theme of the song which is about a stripper and her customer falling in love. Incidentally Mr. Brightside was inspired by the movie Moulin Rouge. So as we can see the core concept from Lapdance Romance, Mr. Brightside and Moulin Rouge is all essentially telling the same story. In the case of Lapdance Romance, it's my own true story.

MR. BRIGHTSIDE

When it comes to how "The Perfect Drug" influenced Lapdance Romance it was on a more artistic level. I wanted to go with an Victorian era inspired aesthetic with a palette that matched the painting Lapdance Romance and the painting for Lapdance Romance has an absinthe glass as one of the key visuals and lyrically uses absinthe intoxication as a metaphor for falling in love. The Perfect Drug was an excellent reference video for art direction.

THE PERFECT DRUG

So if you actually watched all 3 videos you can probably see where I was coming from and how Lapdance Romance was influenced by both "The Perfect Drug" and "Mr. Brightside." If anything I'm ripping off Nine Inch Nails and The Killers, not Marilyn Manson.

Let's move on to the other similarities shall we? We're both artists within the "goth" genre. We're both influenced by Trent Reznor. We both have music videos with a very bold and stylized aesthetic that incorporate the central concepts of the song through visual metaphor. We both paint. Yes, there are similarites, but similarities can be drawn between most artists within a similar genre. Hence, why we have musical genres and subcultures.

The differences between myself and Mr. Manson are far more staggering. First of all, when it comes to the music videos, Marilyn Manson isn't sitting at his day job as an interior designer storyboarding his own music video and then designing the sets, sourcing set dec and props, making the costumes, building and decorating the sets and then shooting the videos in his living room while his kids run around eating up all the food he bought with his own money to feed the cast and crew. 

Second of all, Marilyn Manson unlike myself is a major label artist with "people" who do all that behind the scenes shit for him. Because he is a major label artist he doesn't get his hands dirty in the actual production of the video like I do. He's not the art director of his videos like I am. He's not sitting at his laptop editing his own vocal tracks at 3 am. He's not funding his projects by giving lap dances or working a day job either. As an independent artist I have a much greater degree of creative control over my music & videos because I fund everything with my own money and I'm literally involved in every aspect of the audio & video production process.

Thirdly, we differ on a philosophical level when it comes to our beliefs. He's a huge fan of Anton LeVey and an honorary bishop in the Church of Satan. He has been described as the "highest profile Satanist ever" with strong anti-Christian views. I on the other hand, while not being a religious individual am a theist and see merit in the teachings and philosophies of Jesus Christ. I'm not anti-religion or pro-religion. Religion in my view is benign and can be used as a tool to do great good or tremendous evil. It ultimately is up to the individual and the actions they choose to commit in the name of said religion. Both of our philosophical views are very obviously reflected in our lyrics. On a side note though Marilyn Manson has some really intelligent and insightful lyrics. He's up there as far as my favorite lyricists go. 

Lastly, our sound is different. Just listen to him and listen to me. We may fit withing the same genre, but we sound quite different.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the idea. As an artist and a person, I just want to be the best version of myself that I can be. I don't want to be Marilyn Manson. Hell, I don't even want to be Trent Reznor! I just want to be Jenny Kirby making art through the project Borg Queen. Besides, Jenny's a lot prettier than both those guys ;)

Let's Talk About Sex

"Call me crazy but I have about as much interest in fucking a selfish misogynist as I do listening to selfish misogynist bragging about how much pussy he gets over a loop of plagiarized musi...oops, I mean a sample."

Honestly I really don't know what to write about today, so I'm just going to write about what's on my mind 99% of the day - SEX.  I'm in one of "those" moods where I am on the cusp of just blurting out all my super personal dirty laundry for the world to see. My mother says I lack discretion. Her thought process behind all this is that I write songs that are too "sexually explicit" and reveal too much of my body in music videos. I feel kind of bad for saying this because my mother is a sweet old woman, but her concerns are completely laughable. She has NO clue about what kind of content other artists put out. She's incredibly sheltered and naive and has obviously never heard Closer by Nine Inch Nails.

That's me covered in oil & uv ink getting down and dirty with my co-star in Lapdance Romance

I on the other hand embrace my sexuality and love expressing it artistically. I mean, who doesn't like
a good fuck? I know I do. If one can translate the experience of a hard, sweaty, dirty lay through an artistic medium than I say, "LETS DO IT!" I think the reason so much music out there is about sex is because sex is relateable. Everyone on this earth at some point is going to engage in some kind of sex act(masturbation counts).

Every genre of music has sex songs. They focus of sex tends to vary by genre, and I think what type of musical genre a person is drawn to reveals quite a bit about them sexually. I know it does in my case.

For example country and R&B tend focus on "making love." Personally that term makes me a little queasy so I kinda throw up in my mouth a little if someone refers to sex as "making love." I'ts just too sweet and sappy for my appetite. It's no surprise that both of those genres don't appeal to me at all.

Punk music on the other hand has a lot of masturbation references. Which makes sense if you think about it, because punk music is tends to be juvenile and simplistic, and lets face it, most of the sex you have as a juvenile is going to be with yourself and it doesn't get any simpler than that. On a side note, I'm a pretty big fan of punk music. *wink wink*

Pop music sex references tend to be pretty vanilla and generic much like the genre itself. The references are there but they're tired and overused. Again, just like everything within the pop genre. Not a huge fan of pop.

Rap/Hip Hop or what ever the fuck it's called these days is the one that actually irks me the most on a sexual level. Having worked in strip clubs I've been subjected to a lot of this particular genre. If a rap song isn't about money, drugs or "thug life" then it's gonna be about sex. I don't know what it is about these artists, but I were to use lyrics as an indicator of their sexual ability I'd have to say that these guys don't know how to fuck at all. Most of the time the song is about some dude talking about how feels like some "bitch" should be sucking his dick and then how she's such a "ho" for doing it. Call me crazy but I have about as much interest in fucking a selfish misogynist as I do listening to selfish misogynist bragging about how much pussy he gets over a loop of plagiarized musi...oops, I mean a sample.

I'm not gonna go through every genre of music, but I am going to end off with my genre. I'm an artist of the goth/electro/industrial variety. The sex songs are dark, psychologically driven, explicit at times and tend to be of the kinkier variety. Which pretty much sums me up. But I'll let you be the judge. My music video Lapdance Romance is a toned down version of my animistic side. Enjoy!

The End Is In Sight

I just got sent a preview of the music video for Lapdance Romance from Arcelia the director. It looks amazing! It's not what I expected, but I'm definitely happy with it. Now all that's left is to finish mastering the audio track and then it's time to release it.

This is something that took way longer that I felt it should have and there were some major bumps along the way, including lack of money and serious issues with the producer/engineer I hired to help me record anything. I'm not going to go into the gory details though because the end is in sight, and I believe everything happens for a reason.

So here's some teaser screen shots from the video. Enjoy!

Lapdance Romance Part 2 - A Labor of Love, Persistence and Complete Insanity

Lets Recap
In anticipation of the release of my song/music video/visual masterpiece that is Lapdance Romance I've decided to re-hash my long arduous production journey. To recap, Lapdance Romance was a song and painting that I created for my husband, before he was my husband while we were on a break. I wrote and recorded the original demo back in 2010. You can listen to the original demo it on my Soundcloud profile here.

As mentioned before I tend to think big, and as a product of the MTV generation I decided that I wanted to create an audio-visual masterpiece in the form of a music video that would use the story behind the song and visuals in the painting as it's inspiration. When approached my director friend Arcelia Ocana of Ribbit Ribbit Studios about the project and played her the song, her reply was, "Jenny, we love the song and we want to make you famous!" This is typical Arcelia as she's a bubbling cauldron of positive, creative energy. So hurdle, number one, find a director, was done.

The DYI Insanity Begins
My next big issue was budget. I literally did not have a budget, at all. When Arcelia approached me about this (not so)minor detail I sheepishly mentioned that I don't have a budget, but have no fear because I have connections to talented(and generous) people AND a lot of this is going to be a largely DIY affair on my behalf. My hair brain scheme is that I would be a one woman art department as the video would be based on my art. Her response was, "No problem, we'll make it work. We all love you at Ribbit Ribbit and want to see you succeed."

Having gone to art school for animation and worked as an animator I was well versed in the art of story boarding and making animatics, so I offered to do the basic pre-production work myself and create an animatic for Arcelia to work off of.  I've never made this animatic public before until now, so if you click the link of  "The Lost Lapdance Romance Animatic" you'll be directed to my ultra secret You Tube video that up until now has only been seen by production staff.

Jenny Learns To Work With Others
One of the hardest things for me on collaborative creative projects is giving up control and letting others do their jobs. I saw making this music video as the perfect opportunity to do some personal growth, so when Arcelia approached me, and said that while they(Ribbit Ribbit) loved the animatic, they wanted to bring in a writer to write the script for the video. They wanted to keep the basic story the same, but they just wanted to write it themselves with my input of course. So, I let go and said ok. HUGE step for me.

The writer in question was someone that I had worked with before, Niko Koupanstis a very talented writer and actor that I had the pleasure of working with on a short film of Arcelia's called "Mime Love." He stuck to the basic storyline of whore falls for a client at a brothel while under the influence of absinthe but added some cool twists that served to really amp up the dark and creepy side of things. In Niko's version the whores became dolls that the madame keeps locked in display cases, but my favorite idea of his was that in the absinthe hallucination my character transforms into a cybernetic dominatrix.

His concept really allowed me to get creative with the character designs. As you can see below, the original character design I came up with for the cyber dominatrix and then the final product underneath it is me in my full make-up and costume.

Orginal character design of my cyborg dominatrix alter ego

On set as my cyborg dominatrix character

I guess you could say that the lesson learned here is that it never hurts to allow others to have some input because they might just come up with some pretty cool shit you would have never thought of. So when Arcelia approached me about improving the sound quality of my original recording by hiring a producer to work with, I was definitely less hesitant, but that's another story for another day as the saga of Lapdance Romance continues...

Lapdance Romance Part 1 - A Labor of Love, Persistence and Complete Insanity

Waaaaaaaay back in July of 2010 I wrote a little ditty called Lapdance Romance. I wrote it as a romantic gesture for a man I met and fell in love with at a strip club. We met because he was lonely, bored and on a whim decided to go to his local strip joint and get a lap dance(or 4). As fate would have it, I was the lucky stripper and we fell madly in love. Then some shit happened, we broke up, I wrote the song as a big romantic gesture, we got back together, got married blah blah blah etc. It's the kinda stuff movies are made of really. However I'm not a filmmaker, so I wrote a song and painted a lovely picture about it instead.

So, when I originally wrote the song, I recorded a demo of it using only Reason 4.0 and Sonar as my DAW in my makeshift home studio one sunny summer afternoon. I then presented the song to my estranged sweetheart as a romantic gesture to let him know that I still loved him. It truly was a labor of love. 

Fast forward almost 4 years later and I'm still working on the damn thing. I had some lofty goals for this song and they're finally coming to fruition. It wasn't just enough to record my crappy home-recorded demo and give it to the object of my affection. NOOOOOOOOO, not me, that's just not how I roll. I needed to make a production of it, literally. I wanted to make a full-on cinematic style, professionally shot music video. So that's exactly what I did. It may have taken 2 almost years from the beginning of production til now, and they're have been numerous obstacles(illness, lack of money, battles with producers) to overcome, but the end is now in sight. 

This has been an amazing period of learning and growth for me both personally and professionally. It's been frustrating at times, but overall one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I'm gonna save the rest of the story for my next post though, but I guess you could say it all began when I approached my friend Arcelia Ocana of Ribbit Ribbit Studios to direct my video...

Gettin' Down To Business(sexy business that is)

Today I spent most of my time at my interior design day job applying for a FACTOR grant. For those of you who don't know what FACTOR is, it's The Foundation Assisting Canadian Talent on Recordings. The Canadian talent in question is me! Yup, I'm Canadian, talented and in dire need of assistance, financially speaking.  Anyway, I digress as usual, but the point is that things are really moving forward with getting Lapdance Romance to being a commercially released single. Hooray!

As far as the studio sessions go, I'm having a blast recording with Ryan. We're both equally as depraved which is great when the song your working on is super sexually charged. We did guitars last time and the goal was to convey an orgasm using guitar in a part of the song. Needless to say, we succeeded and this song is going to be sexy as hell and give many a listener an eargasm. I know it gets my blood boiling. Well, that's enough about what a pervert I am, but I've always been a firm believer that art has to originate from an honest place.

Also, I'm pleased to announce that the Borg Queen store is open for business, so now all of you art fans out there can purchase giclee prints of the art for Sex, Drugs & Shiny Brass Poles. So, if you wanna support me as an artist and help me cover the costs of making the album, you can go to the store and buy some art now and feel all warm and fuzzy inside for being such a gosh darn nice person and helping an independent artist launch their career. I'd also like to note that as an extra added incentive for you hipsters out there that buying my art right now will only make you that much cooler, because it proves that you were a fan of Borg Queen WAY before everybody else.

So to sum it all up  in a neat little package(heh heh I said package)I couldn't be more please with how things are moving along and this is the most vital I've felt in a long time.

p.s. Buy some art!

I Was Wrong! Alan And Ryan Are Totally Rad

As it turns out, I do work well with others, very well in fact! Who knew? Anyway, I met with Alan Wong-Moon and Ryan "Tweak" Clark last week and needless to say I instantly clicked with Ryan and we've been in the studio for a couple sessions now working on Lapdance Romance.

I must say that I've been injected with new life and it's wonderful working with someone that really, truly "gets" me. This is really key though to the whole production process for me, because my biggest fear was that these guys were going to push my music in a direction that would ensure commercial success, but me as an artist would get lost in the uber polished production. Thank God this isn't the case!

The track is sounding so amazing and I can't wait for it to be done. We're planning to release it as a single along with a music video which will be shot by Ribbit Ribbit here in the next few months. As with any art form this is all a huge process, but instead of being freaked out that I'm not getting any younger I'm enjoying every moment of creation. Thanks Ryan. You rock!